2020 contenders scramble in advance of January campaign kickoff

Local phones are buzzing with personal phone calls from national politicians. Emissaries are on the ground recruiting operatives. Potential candidates are vying to land prized speaking slots at holiday parties.

It’s a mad, end-of-the-year rush of political traffic in the early presidential states, where prospective 2020 contenders are scrambling to hire top-flight talent before it’s picked clean, and hoping to make an impression before an expected explosion of campaign announcements in January.

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The scene offers an early glimpse at the distortions caused by a sprawling roster of competitors that is already proving jarring to a party coming off a quarter-century of manageable candidate fields led by clear front-runners.

“If 12 or 14 of them announce, that means 12 or 14 of them will be in Iowa in January at least once,” said Pete D'Alessandro, Iowa director for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign. “When someone announces for president, they’ll be in Iowa within a week of their announcing.”

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The activity is especially acute in Iowa, where lower-profile prospects are attempting to get noticed before the mayhem begins in earnest. Last week, while billionaire Michael Bloomberg went on a multi-city tour where he sat with top Iowa Democrats, West Virginia state Sen. Richard Ojeda was in Des Moines visiting with labor groups.

Next week, Maryland Rep. John Delaney will be in front of a Des Moines group at the Progressive Policy Institute, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, California Rep. Eric Swalwell and entrepreneur Andrew Yang are slated to speak at a holiday party for Progress Iowa, a progressive group with more than 75,000 members statewide.

“We’ll have 250 to 300 people at our event who are highly involved, highly engaged progressives from all over the state,” Progress Iowa Executive Director Matt Sinovic said. “These candidates or potential candidates know this is a very good room to be in and meet with progressives from all over the state.”

But Iowa isn’t the only hot spot. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock was in Nevada last week, billionaire Tom Steyer was in South Carolina and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was in New Hampshire.

In all these places, candidate appearances are just part of the action -- behind the scenes, there is a hunt for field directors and staffers. A political staffer for Eric Garcetti, for example, sat down with Iowa operatives in Des Moines last week to talk about staffing up the Los Angeles mayor’s potential campaign, according to two people who took the meetings.

And the political organizations of Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker are each in advanced conversations with veteran staffers in Iowa and New Hampshire, multiple sources with knowledge of the talks told POLITICO.

Booker has been especially busy. Over the weekend, the New Jersey senator headlined a New Hampshire Democratic post-midterm celebration, getting him in front of a captive, first-in-the-nation primary state audience still joyous over big Democratic wins in November. It was during this visit that Booker announced he would take the holidays to give serious thought to a presidential run.

Booker’s New Hampshire visit scored a sizable media bounce at a time when several other top-tier candidates noticeably ramped down their activity. His event was coupled with a series of house parties where he capitalized on having relaxed, face-to-face interactions with key local political stakeholders.

“He had a number of house parties, [where he was in front of] prominent long-term Democratic activists or opinion leaders,” said New Hampshire Young Democrats president Lucas Meyer, adding that because of the December timing, Booker could make early impressions and test messaging without feeling locked into policy positions.

By early next year, all of that changes for candidates, Meyer said. “They are going to have to shift and start contrasting their message with Trump,” he said. “Anyone who comes through the state is going to have to be more deliberate in their messaging and start trying to pitch themselves.”